Rachael Soroka teaches family-friendly, all-ages chicken butchering classes in her backyard in Richmond, California. She begins classes by holding a live chicken in her arms and asking the children present, “Does this look like a chicken we buy at the grocery store? What would we need to do to make it look like a chicken at the grocery store?”

Soroka rejects the idea that being open about mortality, including demonstrating the slaughtering of an animal for meat, is inappropriate for young children. “I think that facing our discomfort around death and killing,” Soroka says, “makes us more available to meet our children’s needs for exploration of death and killing—and living.”